Movie Review: Old (2021)

Synopsis: A group of vacationing adults and their children are driven to a remote beach so they can spend their day by the ocean. However, when their young kids become teenagers in a matter of a couple hours, they realize they are all growing older at an accelerated rate and are unable to leave the beach.

Who's in it? The movie stars Gael Garcia Bernal, Vicky Krieps, Rufus Sewell, Alex Wolff and Francesca Eastwood.

Review: My wife wanted to see this movie when it first came out last year. However, I'm not a big M. Night Shyamalan fan and was hesitant about spending nearly two hours watching it, even after she checked it out from the library yesterday.

Despite my reluctance, we did finally end up watching the movie yesterday evening. After doing so, I have to admit it wound up being better than I was expecting.

One thing that really surprised me about this movie was how it wasn't as predictable as I thought it would be. I was able to correctly guess who was behind the rapid aging process, but the movie still managed to be a solid mystery because it wasn't clear how they were aging or why anyone would want to do that to a group of people (though I did also correctly guess it had something to do with their various illnesses).

I also found I liked how the group didn't just give up and accept their fate (as I've seen in too many other movies) and continually tried to come up with ways to escape the beach. This, in itself, kept the film from becoming too predictable because it was hard to determine which of the vacationers would die from old age and which ones would wind up killing themselves in an escape attempt.

My only real complaint about the movie was just how clueless these people were, at least in the beginning. There were times when the movie almost felt like a comedy because the adults were coming up with some really stupid reasons for the kids' rapid growth, such as a reaction to food or a virus, and it seemed to take them much longer to figure out they were all getting older than it should have. 

I mean, the fact their wounds were healing instantly should have been a pretty clear indication that something strange was going on, but they almost seemed to take that part in stride. In any case, I did spend several minutes yelling at them and calling them dumbasses because it was pretty clear, had this been a more traditional horror film, they would have been the ones hiding behind the chainsaws to get away from the killer rather than driving away in the running car.

Final Opinion: Truthfully, there are some parts of this movie that are a bit stupid. However, the overall film is honestly better than I was expecting, and I did enjoy watching it overall.

My Grade: B